Welcome back to a new edition of Nice Ants, your favourite way to learn creative strategy.
This week we're gonna be learning:
The secret to infomercials.
Why is chemistry so important in creator ads?
The storytelling static ads that are producing winner after winner
If you want an easy way to make better creatives, my new course is probably the best place to start. I recently updated it with a couple of new modules to help keep it up-to-date. You can enrol today here.
The Black Stuff
Let's talk about infomercials. They are probably synonymous with cheesy 80s adverts. In actual fact, they can be a really great way to bring people into the top of the funnel.
If you're advertising, this is one that we recently made for The Blank Stuff. If you don't know who they are, they're a soap brand from Ireland, and one of their soaps is made from Guinness. What we decided to do was create an ad that's focused on educating people on Guinness, why it exists, why it's called The Blank Stuff, and then link that to the brand.
It seems a little bit counterintuitive because the actual ad doesn't really do much selling, but the idea isn't to sell. It's to interest people, with the hopes that other ads within the account eventually persuade them to purchase. In fact, the actual ad doesn't even mention the brand until about 47 seconds in, and this is on purpose. Anyone can adapt this to their brand to do the same thing. You just want to lead with education and leave the selling until the end.
The lesson is not to be scared of doing ads that aren't directly sales-focused, because the customer journey is much longer than you probably even realise, and so everything compounds.
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The Scent Reserve
This ad is currently a top performer in the account. I used TrendTrack to see the spend and impression count. I think when you watch it, it's very clear why it's a top performer: although this kind of creative, where someone tries the product, is super popular, that doesn't always mean it's going to be a winner.
I think what makes this a winner is how natural the conversation and engagement is between the two people and how that draws you in, very similar to an organic video of the same nature. My guess is that these two are staff members and so know the product very well and probably know each other very well.
I think, as we mentioned multiple times in issues of this newsletter, getting your employees to create ads is such a secret hack that I still don't see enough brands doing. That's why I think if I were hiring an internal marketing team, I'd make sure I have one or two who have made content on that team before to help create creative like this.
Away from the people who make the ad, the actual structure works really well. They put the original against the dupe, smell them, and can't tell the difference. This is the type of content that potential customers of this product want to see. They want to hear honest opinions on whether this stuff actually smells the same or if it's just marketing. The more truthful you can be about this and the more authentic your ads look, the more trust you build, and the easier the purchase choice.
TLDR:
Being authentic in your ads is the best way to build trust with your customer
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The Nova Bottle
Let's talk about what I'm calling the raw story static. These ads are becoming increasingly popular, but they really started off in the dropshipping space. Essentially, the idea here is to have a very scroll-stopping, strange, raw, authentic-looking image and pair that with long-form storytelling within the actual Facebook body copy. Although this image is more of an educational, spammy graphic, I've seen ones for dry skin that are a real extreme close-up of irritated dry skin, or for nighttime driving glasses. It's an image of someone driving at night with their headlights on. The idea is just to have a very plain-looking image, but then let the copy do the storytelling.
So here is the entire copy from the attached ad - get ready, because it is long
“I thought I my hips were broken forever at 52."
I couldn't understand what was happening to my body.
The hip pain started slowly - just a little stiffness getting out of bed.
But within months, I was limping everywhere, avoiding stairs, and sleeping in our guest room because I couldn't stop tossing and turning.
My husband would ask if I wanted to go for walks, and I'd make excuses. Movie theaters became torture - sitting for two hours was impossible.
I started declining dinner invitations because getting up from restaurant chairs was embarrassing.
Three doctors, zero answers.
The first one barely looked up from his chart.
"Probably arthritis. Try some Advil."
The second ordered X-rays that came back normal. "Maybe you need to lose some weight."
The third one actually examined me but shrugged. "It's just part of getting older. Have you tried yoga?"
I'm 52, not 82. But they made me feel like I was imagining things.
The 2am research session that changed everything.
Desperate and sleepless from pain, I started scrolling through menopause Facebook groups at 2am. Post after post of women describing my exact symptoms - that burning ache, the stiffness, pain that made no sense to doctors.
That's when I learned something that blew my mind: when estrogen drops during menopause, it literally inflames your hip tendons. It's called gluteal tendinopathy, and most doctors have never heard of it.
But here's the crazy part - I found women raving about this supplement called Her Again with something called L. gasseri. Apparently, it's the only probiotic clinically proven to help your body produce estrogen naturally.
Not synthetic hormones with scary side effects. Just helping your gut make what it used to.
Four weeks later, I'm a different person.
The constant burning ache is gone. I sleep through the night on my side. Yesterday, I walked three miles with my husband for the first time in a year. He said he got his wife back.
My body wasn't broken. It just needed the right support.
If you're where I was - dismissed by doctors,
doubting yourself, avoiding activities you love
You see, the key to these ads is to make them sound like they're just an average person venting on Facebook. This works particularly well with an older user of the platform because they're more willing to read it and have a longer attention span. We've been making a couple of these recently, and I'm quite excited to see the results. It does help if you can whitelist them from some kind of blog page or a fake creator, something to make it feel like it's not coming directly from the brand.
TLDR:
Long form is just getting more popular
That's all for this week's Night Ads. I appreciate you taking the time to read it. I've just released a brand new YouTube video. You can give that a watch here if you're interested, and I'll see you next week
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